Geese. 735 



Care of the Young. — During the first few days goslings may be 

 given bread-crumbs, bran, cooked mealie meal, maslied potatoes mixed 

 witli milk, finely chopped vegetables, such as lettuce, young green 

 barley, or young green grass. A good way of providing the latter is 

 to procure a sod covered with short grass and place it near the nest or 

 brooder. When the young are fairly strong, i.e. about two weeks old, 

 they may be allowed to run at large with their mother, providing 

 always that they are not exposed to rainstorms. A goose will mother as 

 many as forty goslings. When they come in at night they should again 

 be given food as mentioned above. It will be seen that by setting 

 two or more geese simultaneously the broods of two may be given to 

 one, and the other goose returned to the breeding-pen. She will come 

 on to lay again shortly, and in that way produce two broods in a 

 season. Artificial rearing of goslings is also successful. 



Fattening. — This takes twenty-five to thirty days. Geese to be 

 fattened should be given such grain as cracked mealies, rolled oats, 

 rolled barley, with a little mealie meal mixed with water ; raw chopped 

 mangels are also very good ; this diet should be given for about 

 fourteen days, then the cracked mealies should be discontinued and 

 the mealie meal increased. The mangel or other roots should be 

 boiled, mixed with bran, mealie meal, finely ground oats and barley, 

 and fed in troughs. It is an advantage if milk can be added to the 

 above, as it is claimed that milk fat produces a flavour of its own. 

 During the fattening period geese should be kept in crates or fattening 

 pens, with little or no liberty, giving food as indicated, with clean 

 water to drink. 



Killing. — Geese are killed by sticking a knife in the roof of the 

 mouth, a quick motion severing the arteries and penetrating the brain. 

 The feathers are removed by dry plucking, care being taken to avoid 

 tearing the skin, which in a fat bird is very lender and tears easily. 



CoTiivierdal or Marketable Geese. — In South Africa there is very 

 little demand for very heavy geese, such as Toulouse or Embden. the 

 most popular weight being ganders 10 to 12 lb., and geese 8-10 lb. 

 It will, therefore, be seen that, speaking commercially from a pojjular 

 market view-point, the two best breeds to meet the requirements of 

 the South African markets are the Chinese and Cape goose. Many 

 breeders, however, cross the Cape goose with the Embden or Toulouse 

 bird wath the object, it is claimed, of producing faster maturing 

 goslings. It is thought personally that very li-ttle is gained by this 

 procedure, as both the Chinese and Cape goose are particularly hardy 

 and quick maturing, and, as already mentioned, meet public require- 

 ments. 



By-products. — The by-products from geese are the feathers and 

 down, and also their manure. The most valuable by-product is 

 undoubtedly down, which has given rise to a practice (greatly to be 

 deprecated) of cutting the down from the geese every month or six 

 weeks. This is a most cruel practice. Geese may, however, be plucked 

 once annually with advantage, that is, when the feathers are ripe, 

 usually in the month of December. It stands to reason that, just 

 prior to moulting, unless the feathers are plucked they would fall 

 out naturally and be lost, therefore there is no reason why all geese 

 should not be plucked just before the moulting period. To do this 



